Two Letters: Context and Harsh Reality of Trump’s Foreign Policy

This week saw the public release of two open letters to President Trump. They are worthy of our attention as they clearly highlight how far President Trump is moving America from its leadership of the free world and aid to protect democratic countries.

On the same day as President Trump’s address to Congress, Ukraine’s President Zelensky posed online what President Trump described as a letter to him. When read it full, the letter is not quite the capitulation that Trump’s reading of excerpts would suggest.

The following is the full text of Zelensky’s  letter.

I would like to reiterate Ukraine’s commitment to peace.

None of us wants an endless war. Ukraine is ready to come to the negotiating table as soon as possible to bring lasting peace closer. Nobody wants peace more than Ukrainians. My team and I stand ready to work under President Trump’s strong leadership to get a peace that lasts.

We are ready to work fast to end the war, and the first stages could be the release of prisoners and truce in the sky — ban on missiles, long-ranged drones, bombs on energy and other civilian infrastructure — and truce in the sea immediately, if Russia will do the same. Then we want to move very fast through all next stages and to work with the US to agree a strong final deal.

We do really value how much America has done to help Ukraine maintain its sovereignty and independence. And we remember the moment when things changed when President Trump provided Ukraine with Javelins. We are grateful for this.

Our meeting in Washington, at the White House on Friday, did not go the way it was supposed to be. It is regrettable that it happened this way. It is time to make things right. We would like future cooperation and communication to be constructive.

Regarding the agreement on minerals and security, Ukraine is ready to sign it in any time and in any convenient format. We see this agreement as a step toward greater security and solid security guarantees, and I truly hope it will work effectively.”

Poland.’s former President Lech Walesa also sent a letter to President Trump. Posted on Facebook in Polish, the following is one of a number of full-text English translations.

Your Excellency Mr President,

We watched the report of your conversation with the President of Ukraine Volodymyr Zelenski with fear and distaste. We consider your expectations to show respect and gratitude for the material help provided by the United States fighting Russia to Ukraine insulting. Gratitude is due to the heroic Ukrainian soldiers who shed their blood in defense of the values of the free world. They have been dying on the frontline for more than 11 years in the name of these values and independence of their Homeland, which was attacked by Putin’s Russia.

We do not understand how the leader of a country that is the symbol of the free world cannot see it.

Our panic was also caused by the fact that the atmosphere in the Oval Office during this conversation reminded us of one we remember well from Security Service interrogations and from the debate rooms in Communist courts. Prosecutors and judges at the behest of the all-powerful communist political police also explained to us that they hold all the cards and we hold none. They demanded us to stop our business, arguing that thousands of innocent people suffer because of us. They deprived us of our freedoms and civil rights because we refused to cooperate with the government and our gratitude. We are shocked that Mr. President Volodymyr Zelenski was treated in the same way.

The history of the 20th century shows that every time the United States wanted to keep its distance from democratic values and its European allies, it ended up being a threat to themselves. This was understood by President Woodrow Wilson, who decided to join the United States in World War I in 1917. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt understood this, deciding after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 that the war for the defense of America would be fought not only in the Pacific, but also in Europe, in alliance with the countries attacked by the Third Reich.

We remember that without President Ronald Reagan and American financial commitment it would not have been possible to bring the collapse of the Soviet Union empire. President Reagan was aware that millions of enslaved people were suffering in Soviet Russia and the countries it conquered, including thousands of political prisoners who paid for their sacrifice in defense of democratic values with freedom. His greatness consisted, among other things, the fact that he unhesitatingly called the USSR the “Evil Empire” and gave it a decisive fight. We won, and a monument to President Ronald Reagan stands today in Warsaw opposite the U.S. Embassy.

Mr. President, material aid – military and financial – cannot be equaited with the blood shed in the name of independence and freedom of Ukraine, Europe, anf the whole free world. Human life is priceless, its value cannot be measured with money. Gratitude is due to those who make the sacrifice of blood and freedom. This is obvious for us, the people of “Solidarity”, former political prisoners of the communist regime serving Soviet Russia.

We are calling for the United States not to withdraw from the guarantees it made together with the Great Britain in the 1994 Budapest Memorandum, which recorded a direct obligation to defend the intact borders of Ukraine in exchange for giving up its nuclear weapons resources. These guarantees are unconditional: there is no mention about treating such aid as an economic exchange.

Signed by Lech Walesa and 39 other former Cold War political prisoners.

Particularly powerful, in my view, is Walesa’s scathing criticism of Trump’s crass focus on profits and demands on repayment of financial assistance. He also reminds Trump of where gratitude should be directed.

A quarter of a century has passed since Lech Waleca’s ‘Solidarnosc’ (Solidarity) movement acted as a catalist to the eventual, fall of the Soviet Union. It is important fot Predidentn Trump to be reminded of the role the US played in protecting the free world.